PPC News Roundup for July 25, 2007

Microsoft takes another step in challenging Google with their new ‘Gatineau Analytics’ Package. There’s not too much of a difference between the two analytics packages except that MSN will provide demographics data like the gender and age of people who are visiting your site. Gatineau will launch in beta later this summer.

Much debate exists about the sophistication for landing pages in search marketing. In search engine land a post has been put up regarding business to business search marketing and landing pages. Studies have found that the simpler these marketers make their landing pages, the better. Business buyers want easy-to-read content first, and the gimmicks such as webinars or podcasts later.

This post reminds us that “there are more poor spellers than there are good!” While most advertisers include keyword misspellings in their PPC campaigns, many fail to do the same for negative keywords. In fact, adding typos and misspellings to your negative keyword list can end up saving you more money than you think.

Alan Rimm-Kaufman poses an interesting question over at Search Engine Land: Should stronger keywords subsidize weaker keywords? His conclusion yes, you should have an army of keywords at your disposal, and I agree. Most PPC campaigns have their cream-of-crop keywords that drive the majority of the traffic and conversions (this number is usually about 10 ultra-keywords). However, you shouldn’t rely on those heavy hitter keywords alone; you need to fill out your long tail keyword list in order to supplement your traffic, conversions and revenue.

Google, Yahoo, and MSN are not the only search engines that can generate clicks and conversions with PPC campaigns. In the article “Taking your PPC Campaigns Beyond the Majors” they discuss a case study in which a company was able to generate almost as many clicks with a less known search engine while keeping their CPC at a fraction of the cost. Learn how to broaden your horizons and generate more revenue with your PPC campaigns.

The Rimm Kaufman blog has once again dived into the performance of matching types. They methodically prove out that exact matched keywords bring double the value of their broad matched counterparts. Their tip? Segment traffic by match type and bid accordingly!